Monday's Long Song

Echo and The Bunnymen are touring at the moment and walked into some difficulties last week with a few hit and miss reviews and a last minute cancelled gig in Manchester. They got back underway at Bristol and seem to be back on track but all is not well if you read between the lines. I've seen them several times in the last few years and always had a good night out- those songs, Ian in good voice, Will's guitar playing- but at some gigs others have attended Ian hasn't always been at his best and this seems to have been the case last week. Hopefully, he's OK. 

In 2013 Will and original bass playing Bunnyman Les Pattinson formed a side band, Poltergeist, a trio of cosmic explorers with Will very much free to indulge his psychedelic guitar dreams. The eight instrumental songs on Your Mind Is A Box (Let Us Fill It With Wonder) are all worthy of the time spent with them, Will and Les mining 70s cosmische, 60s psyche and scouse adventurism to fine effect. Over half the songs on the album stretch out over six minutes- this one, Cathedral, opens the record and gathers a head of steam, Will's guitars shimmering and careering over some lovely bass playing from Les. 

Cathedral

In the 70s, as Liverpool's punk scene spun into being Will lived on a flat with Paul Simpson (Teardrop Explodes, The Wild Swans, Care, solo, author, smart dresser) halfway between the city's pair of famous cathedrals. Leaving his front door and turning left or right would bring either the Anglican one or the Modernist Catholic one immediately into view. I've always assumed that this track is a tribute to one or the other or both. 

Forty Five Minutes Of Bunnymen

I've been thinking about an Echo And The Bunnymen mix for ages without committing. Part of me just wanted to do the first four albums, the original line up of McCulloch, Sergeant, Pattinson and De Freitas, from Eric's to Ocean Rain. Part of me wanted to just sling together my favourite Bunnymen songs (more or less the same thing actually). Part of me wanted to do just B-sides and album songs. These things may still happen. But I enjoyed the pair of New Order mixes I did earlier this year where I started with a New Order song and went where it suggested, taking in solo songs, remixes, covers, edits and songs that sounded New Order- esque- so I used that as a guide and started a Bunnymen mix in a similar vein. There are edits and solo songs, B-sides and singles, outliers in the Bunnymen world. 

Forty Five Minutes Of Bunnymen

• Into The Seventies
• Bedbugs And Ballyhoo (Single Version)
• Never Stop (Discoteque)
• BOTDH Peza Edit
• Thorn Of Crowns (Go Home Productions Remix)
• Lover Lover Lover (Indian Dawn Remix)
• The Killing Moon (T- Rek's Desert Disco Dub)
• Weird Gear

William Alfred Sergeant is Echo And The Bunnymen's guitarist, a sometime solo artist, memoir writer and all round good egg. In 2020 he released an an album of instrumentals called Things Inside. Into The Seventies was the opening track, a three minutes of finger picking and drones that sounds like the soundtrack to a late night TV programme. His side project with Les Pattinson, Poltergeist, released a fine album too, Your Mind Is A Box (Let Us Fill It With Wonder), which I should have included in this mix. 

Bedbugs And Ballyhoo was originally a B-side to Bring On The Dancing Horses, a shimmering Bunnymen pop song with a jazzy, groovy B-side. It was re- recorded for the so- called Grey album, their fifth and self- titled album in 1987 (and then released as a single by WEA but I think everyone had pretty much given up on that album by that point). Ray Manzarek of The Doors plays keyboards. Bedbugs And Ballyhoo (along with The Game, Lips Like Sugar and one or two others) are proof that they could have made a really good album out of those songs if they'd not been falling out, had been more arsed and not smothered the songs in late 80s sheen. 

Never Stop is a 1983 single, a massive Bunnymen moment, released to coincide with gigs at the Royal Albert Hall- 'lay down thy raincoat and groove' they instructed. Strings, Ian doing his best Henry Fonda 'Good Gawd' impression and lyrics attacking Thatcherism. Will's bursts of guitar are pretty good too. Discoteque is the 12" mix and the rhythm section really could lay down their raincoats and groove. 

Peza is a DJ, producer and remixer/ edit artist. His version of Bring On The Dancing Horses is a 2019 nu- disco edit that doesn't too anything too radical but keep the song streamlined for the dancefloor. Dancing Horses is brilliant, shimmering 80s alt- pop.

Go Home Productions is/ was the name of Mark Vidler's remix/ edit/ mash up outfit- I featured quite a lot of his stuff back in the early days of this blog and he's been doing his thing since 2002. His unofficial version of Ocean Rain's Crown Of Thorns found its way to the band who liked it so much they put it out themselves. By contrast with Peza, Go Home Productions does monkey around with Thorn Of Crowns, completely reconstructing it, leaving Ian's C- C- C- cucumber, C- C- C- cabbage C- C- C- cauliflower malarkey on top. 

Ian left the Bunnymen and went solo in 1989. Hi first solo lp was Candleland, a low key and somewhat out of step album for 1989 but it's rather wonderful in its own way. His second solo album was 1992's Mysterio which was lead by a cover of Leonard Cohen's Lover Lover Lover. This remix, the Indian Dawn Remix, was by Mark 'Spike' Stent and is very 1992. He went on to work with the reformed Bunnymen on 1999's What Are You Going To Do With Your Life?, the Bunnymen reduced to just Ian and Will. Les left after realising that the things he grew frustrated about with Mac in the 80s were still frustrating and causing arguments in the 90s. 

The Killing Moon is perhaps their best known song- I'm sure it's their most streamed. It gained a whole new life after being included on the soundtrack to Donnie Darko in 2001. It is a superb song,both Ian's timeshifting, romantic lyrics and the swooning 80s post- punk/ psychedelic music. Something For Kate's cover and this dub disco remix came to me via its appearance at an ALFOS. Both Something For Kate and T- Rek are Australian and this cover/ remix is a bassline led, thumping nine minute gloom romp. Lovely. 

Weird Gear is from Everyman And Woman Is A Star, the 1991 album by Ultramarine with lyrics from a Kevin Ayres song, sung by Brendan Staunton and with strings sampled from The Cutter, a 1983 Bunnymen single/ highlight, high drama and urgency, happy losses and drops in the ocean. 

The Return Of The Free CD Box

Today's post is another raid on the box of free CDs that with magazines, a random selection of three tracks from two CDs, both coincidentally from December 2021. First is Will Sergeant, Bunnyman and solo artist. Themes For 'Grind' originally came out in 1982, Will going analogue synth and experimental ambient, an album of  eleven tracks. At first all were titled Untitled but since all have been named Scene followed by a Roman numeral, I through to XI. 

Scene V

Scene V was on Electronic Sounds Best Of 2021 CD, a double album with both new and re- issued music from that year starting with cover star LoneLady and finishing with Me Lost Me. Scene V is early 80s, Cold War/ Liverpool experimentalism, the sound of someone spending some time alone with a room full of synths. Theme For 'Grind' is available to buy in full at Sgt. Fuzz's Bandcamp page. 

Over at Mojo in December 2021 the cover stars were hoary old Led Zeppelin in all their 70s pomp. The free CD however was compiled by Idles, titled Acts Of Resistance, and pulled together a disparate fifteen artists and songs from that year's releases and re- issues, kicking off with Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds' The Mercy Seat and wending its way through Bush Tetras, Idles, Au Pairs, and James Holden among others, with these two finding themselves transferred from disc to my hard drive. 

Fisherman's Blues (Live In Toronto 1989)

In 1989 The Waterboys were riding the crest of a wave, the Big Music replaced by traditional Irish and Scottish music, a move partly due to fiddle player Steve Wickham joining the band as well as Mike Scott's move to Dublin in 1986. The album Fisherman's Blues was a huge success, crossing over and winning new fans. The title track is Dylan- esque, the band in full reel behind Mike and the lyrics all about escape- 'I wish I was a fisherman/ Tumblin' on the seas/ Far away from dry land/ And it's bitter memories... I wish I was a brakeman/ On a hurtlin' fevered train'- and conclude with 'Light in my head/ You in my arms'. The live recording was from Toronto's Masonic Hall, 11th October 1989, a long way from home but in sweeping form. It came as part of a seven CD boxed set of the group in 1989- 90, Fisherman's Blues and Right To Roam album, a huge number of live recordings, versions, remasters and outtakes. 

1000 Miles

1000 Miles is by Dirty Three and their 1996 album Horse Stories. Jim White, Mick Turner and Warren Ellis formed the band in 1992, instrumental music on guitar, drums and violin. 1000 Miles is cinematic, but one of those films that stays with you afterwards leaving you slightly disturbed. 

Tak Tent Mix Pour Lundi

No long song today, a mix instead. Tak Tent Radio is an internet radio station broadcasting out of Scotland with mixes and shows from an array of contributors and regular guests. Some time ago I was asked if I'd like to provide an hour of music for Tak Tent and have since been back four times. The latest Bagging Area Tak Tent mix went up on Saturday and can be found here. More ambient, instrumental and Balearic sounds segued together in a way that I hope is pleasing and semi- competent. I've posted quite a few of the tracks in the mix here in recent times. 

• Underworld: Dark & Long (Most ‘Ospitable Mix)
• David Holmes and Jon Hopkins featuring Stephen Rea: Elsewhere Anchises
• William Alfred Sergeant: Circles
• Chris Carter: Poptone
• William Orbit: Wordsworth
• Sonic Boom/ Spectrum: True Love Will Find You In The End
• Steve Cobby: 45ft. Tide
• Gabriel Yared: C’est Le Vent, Betty
• Andy Bell: When The Lights Go Down
• The Vendetta Suite: Purple Haze, Yellow Sunrise (David Holmes Remix)
• Projections: Original Cell (Coyote Deep State Remix)
• Coyote: The Outsider

For some reason while putting it together the Gabriel Yared track suggested itself to me- I have no idea why. C'est Le Vent, Betty is from the soundtrack to the film Betty Blue. I'm sure you remember Betty Blue...

Betty Blue was released in 1988, directed by Jean- Jacques Beineix and starring Beatrice Dalle as Betty and Jean- Hugues Anglade as Zorg. Zorg lives in a beach house on the coast, making a living as a handyman while trying to become a writer. Betty arrives and turns his life upside down, setting fire to a beach house, stabbing a customer at a pizzeria with a fork and a sharp, painful descent into depression and hospitalisation. The film's first half, all young love and impulsiveness, sex and bohemian lifestyle, contrast sharply with the horrors of the second half. According to the director the film's two stars became very much intertwined, a relationship that went beyond acting. 'We didn't know if they were in the movie anymore', he said. Which puts the film's opening scene, a lengthy sex scene, in a different light. The soundtrack was by Gabriel Yared, a Lebanese composer and pianist and works as a listen in its own right. As well as the track on my mix above, this pair are a good way to start the week. 

Betty Et Zorg

37.2 le Matin

Things Inside

Will Sergeant has spent over four decades as Echo And The Bunnymen's guitarist and has at times found space/ refuge outside the group to record more experimental solo material. I've written about his Poltergeist group before, swirling instrumental, psychedelic rock. I only recently discovered his Bandcamp page which is a treasure trove of material from his 1982 album Themes For GRIND album to more recent solo work. 

In 2012 Will released an album called Things Inside, ten instrumental tracks that find him playing a variety of musical instruments- a lot of acoustic guitar parts with circling finger picking riffs and lines but also toy piano, bells, autoharp and chimes- and producing some lovely hypnotic, contemplative pieces of music, some distance from his Bunnymen guitar sounds and riffs. This one is Eastern Bells complete with some hazy, out of focus landscapes and beaches in the video. Former Bunnyman bandmate Les Pattinson is in there somewhere too. You can find and buy it at Bandcamp. 

From his posts on Twitter it seems Will lives somewhere north of Liverpool where rural Lancashire meets the Fylde coast. In 2013 he released a new album as Glide, two very long pieces of music that seem to capture that part of the country very well, the slightly bleak, windswept coastline and flatlands. Assemblage One and Two are both around twenty minutes long, synths and drones with some lovely bubbling sounds and melody lines coming in and out. ideal music for headphones while out walking. Find it here. 

Will's first album as GRIND came out in 1982, a very experimental electronic album, eleven tracks, all untitled in 1982 but later renamed as numbers and now titled Scene I through to Scene XI (adding to the sense this album is the soundtrack to a film that never got made). Themes For GRIND is very much the product of time spent listening to the West German groups of the 1970s, Cluster and Faust, as well as Brian Eno. Atmospheric ambient and very good indeed. It had a limited edition vinyl re- issue last year which I missed out on but you can get the digital at Bandcamp. 

In 2000 a GRIND 12" was released with track No. 2 and No. 5 from the 1982 album coupled with two new remixes. One was by The Mindwinder (Joe McKechnie). The other was courtesy of Two Lone Swordsmen. Weatherall and Tenniswood remix Will's ambient soundscape in a style which would have easily found a home on their Tiny Reminders album from the same year, minimal abstract machine funk/ techno- static, an insistent drumbeat some whirling, spooked out synths, a juddering bass and a snatch of a ghostly choir. 

Theme For GRIND No. 2 (Reground by The Two Lone Swordsmen)

Monday Mix

This is an hour's worth of songs and sounds I put together a week ago, got distracted from and went back to yesterday. I'm not sure it's quite right but I'm not unpicking the whole thing now so it's here for what looks like a wet and rainy Monday in August. Find it at Mixcloud. 

I did think about dropping found sounds from the BBC sound archive all the way though it- a future project perhaps. I'm not sure the Scritti Politti song works where it is either but there's some nice ambient sounds from Sebidus (The Orb's Alex Paterson and Andy Falconer), some Balearic loveliness from Coyote, solo Strummer, Will Sergeant and Les Pattinson as Poltergeist, Dean and Britta doing Kraftwerk, Sonic Boom droning out Sinner DC, some spaced out sounds from Oregon's Lore City, William Orbit at chill level 10 and Mono Life's stunner of a remix of Pearl's Cab Ride from a few years ago. 

• BBC Sound Archive: Market Sounds
• BBC Sound Archive: Clock
• Sedibus: Afterlife Aftershave (edit)
• Coyote: Café Con Leche
• Joe Strummer: Mango Street
• Poltergeist: The Book Of Pleasures
• Dean and Britta: Neon Lights (Baxter Street Bounce Mix)
• Sinner DC: The Horizon (Sonic Boom No Drums Version)
• Lore City: And Tomorrow
• Scritti Politti: Dr Abernathy
• William Orbit: The Story Of Light
• Pearl’s Cab Ride: Sunrise (Mono Life Extended Trip)

The Book Of Pleasures

Will Sergeant's memoir Bunnyman dropped through my letterbox yesterday, signed by the author himself and now sitting waiting for me to get stuck into, an account his childhood and formative years in Melling (a village on the outskirts of Liverpool, woolly back country for scousers) and the late 70s punk scene centred around Eric's. The book finishes just as Echo And The Bunnymen are about to break so I have a feeling there may be a second volume at some point. Once I've read it, I'll write a fuller post about it. 

In 2013 Will reunited with Bunny bassist Les Pattinson for a group called Poltergeist and armed with guitars, bass and a drummer, a four track and three decades of psychedelic exploration they set about recording an album of instrumentals. At the time Will said it was a return to his pre- punk hippy influences- Floyd, Can, Neu!- and also a reaction to the periodic frustrations of being essentially a hired hand in the band he formed. Ian McCulloch calls the shots in the reformed Bunnymen, decides what they play live and what happens in the studio- which sounds like despite the name on the sleeve most modern Echo And The Bunnymen albums are Mac solo albums and Will recreates his guitar parts on their classic songs on stage. No room to improvise or wig out. Which explains why Poltergeist sounds like it does. Will was in the same class at school as Les Pattinson and never fell out with him so it was obvious to get him in on bass for Poltergeist. This track from their album Your Mind Is A Box (Let Us Fill It With Wonder) unfolds slowly with a little drama and some introspection, a slice of 21st century scouseadelia. 

The Book Of Pleasures

Sergeant On Radio Spacejunk

I found this on Mixcloud (via Facebook I think) and it's a bit of treat, two hours in the company of Will Sergeant and his record collection. There's plenty of songs that you can imagine a younger Will using as the starting point for Bunnymen songs- some psychedelia, some indie, some jazz, plus some chatter in between the songs. It's just right for Sunday morning with a cup of tea/coffee and some toast.

Poltergeist

I found out recently that Will Sergeant, the only man to have been an ever present member of Echo And The Bunnymen, has had a fairly recent (2013) side project with an ex-Bunnyman (bassist Les Pattinson) and it is very good. I don't know how I missed this- and I'm sure some of you didn't- but it is new to me. Poltergeist is Will, Les and drummer Nick Kilroe. They put out an eight track instrumental excursion into psychedelic, open ended space rock called Your Mind Is A Box (Let Us Fill It With Wonder) and on the basis of this track that's exactly what they will do. It also shows that Will is very much an inventive and distinctive guitarist and that stepping away from the Bunnymen is good for his artistic juices.

Sergeant Will

From million selling teenagers yesterday to obscure side projects from middle aged post-punk guitarists today- Bagging Area has been on very random shuffle over the last couple of weeks. Is this good or bad?

 Will Sergeant has had several solo projects over the last three decades, in between Bunnymen activities and occasionally needing some space from Ian McCulloch perhaps. This was a  fairly rare and unknown 12" from 2000 called Theme For GRIND. Will had a Grind album in 1982 which I've never heard but assume it's related. On the 12" Will was remixed by Weatherall and Tenniswood as two Lone Swordsmen. As with many TLS remixes from this time it's long, stoned-ish and abstract, minimal and machanical.

Theme For GRIND No. 2 (Reground by Two Lone Swordsmen)

Echo and the Bunnymen are playing The Ritz soon. Quite tempted.